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reincarnation

“Yep. On this day, 1743 years ago, you fell from your mom during a windstorm, landed in rich humus of oak leaves, dirt, and cow dung.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You were a tiny acorn. No one imagined that out of the hundreds tossed about in the gale, YOU would send down roots, send up shoots, reach your tiny branches to the sky, and voilá, after a couple of centuries your gnarled and lovely branches would shelter many a weary traveler, host many a Druid feast, provide a home for squirrels, insects, birds, your friend Mr. Owl…”

“Good lord. Mr. Owl?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think I called him ‘mister’. How do you know I was ‘born’ on that day?”

“I was there, remember?”

“You were an acorn.”

“Yeah, but I was paying attention. Anyway, that storm was unforgettable.”

“Apparently.”

“Mom made it through. Amazing, considering her great age.”

“I don’t remember ‘mom’ at all.”

“Well, you fell pretty far away from her nurturing influence.”

“Don’t you have a job to go to or something? A Smilodon suit to don? A long, harrowing drive?”

“I quit. Last week. I told you. It got to be tedious after a while. Those Smilodon urges, well, you know. You can’t just put on a costume week after week and not want to hunt mastodons.”

“I think I could do that, Dude. I mean, it was an income. That was a good thing. You got paid a lot…”

“To sweat for two days a week, snarl and make paw swipes, hanging around while my ‘handler’ let the kiddies ask questions that I wasn’t allowed to answer. It’s amazing to me what these so-called scientists don’t seem to know. You’d think they’d remember a little something.”

***

Lamont and Dude are characters I came up with a few years ago. They have the uncanny ability to remember many of their past incarnations which gives them a unique perspective on life, the universe and everything.

P.S. Decided to test out WP’s new editor. Has some glitches but so far so good. I didn’t challenge it much. You can edit the size of an image without going away from your post, which is nice.

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“Remember those lovely warm afternoons after we chased, shredded and shared an protoceraptops and we just lay there, basking on a rock, digesting?”

“What’s wrong, Lamont?”

“Nothing, just thinking of the goodle days.”

“Yeah, the reptilian life has a lot going for it.”

“Especially when you’re a dinosaur, wouldn’t you say? I wouldn’t like being an alligator lizard.”

“Maybe you have been. Who knows?”

“Yeah, that’s not the kind of existence you’d remember, especially if you got run over by a car or eaten by a cat.”

“Did you ever think how everything stays the same and only the names are changed?”

“I have. I was watching a gray tabby cat play with a dead leaf, and I thought ‘Whoa, if I got down there real close to the ground it would look like a Smilodon vs, I don’t know, something’.”

“Yeah, it’s just a matter of scale. Why don’t we go to the store and get some steaks? It’ll be almost like we killed something.”

“Speaking of scale, science has figured out that we didn’t kill many big dinosaurs but were mostly scavengers, and if we killed anything it was mostly bugs, lizards and stuff like that.”

“Science scmience. It was still fun, wasn’t it?”

***

Lamont and Dude are characters I came up with a few years ago. They have the uncanny ability to remember many of their past incarnations which gives them an unusual perspective on life, the universe and everything.

“No, but it is funny. You want to get the girls next door and throw a few steaks on the barbie?”

“Was THAT supposed to be funny?”

“I see what you mean. But anyway, do you?”

“I just want a weekend off, you know? Hang around with no schedules and no hot smilodon suit and no little kid pulling my fake whiskers. It was hard enough being a REAL smilodon.”

“Right, what was hard about that? Top predator, yadda, yadda, yadda.”

“You’re going to have to let that go someday, Lamont. I’m sorry it was you in the tarpit, I’ve told you that a hundred times, but I didn’t know it was you, and even if I had, so what? You know it’s kill-or-be-killed out there. How many times did you kill and eat me? You don’t even know.”

“No, but I savor — ha ha — the memories of the times I remember. Maybe we should change the subject and focus on the time I was a bear and you were a beautiful salmon leaping from the mountain stream, right into my mouth.”

“It was a brief and happy life. There’s something to be said for that.”

“Not much when it comes down to it.”

“OK, but it’s good to look on the bright side.”

***

Lamont and Dude are characters I came up with a few years ago. They have the uncanny ability to remember many of their previous incarnations which gives them a unique perspective on life, the universe and everything.

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“I dunno, Dude. I really thought that guy ‘got it’ you know? But maybe you’ve been right all along.”

“What?”

“About reincarnation.”

“Ah. Well, I dunno. I think the truth is pretty out there.”

“I’m inspired to explain it.”

“It’s your funeral. I gotta’ get ready to go to LA.”

“What if you sat down in your smilodon costume and explained it to all the people watching, you know? Instead of just acting like a humanoid smilodon?”

“That would go over real well. Lamont, let people have their misconceptions. It doesn’t change anything. Maybe a person needs to experience it a few times to really get it.”

“Who HASN’T experienced it a few times?”

“True, but how many people REALIZE it?”

“I think you might be right, Dude. It’s enough that sometimes some people have glimmerings.”

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Wordsworth “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”

***

Lamont and Dude are characters I came up with a few years ago. They have the uncanny ability to remember many of their past incarnations which gives them a unique perspective on life, the universe and everything.

Lamont and Dude are characters I came up with a few years ago. They have the uncanny ability to remember many of their past incarnations. This gives them a unique perspective on life, the universe, and everything.

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“Some names have been tossed around. ‘First You Die and Then You Die,’ didn’t fly but I thought it was funny.”

“You see the challenge, don’t you?”

“I see a lot of challenges. Which one are you referring to?”

“Death is not a cheerful subject for most people.”

“That’s true, and I had thought of that. Most people don’t see it as the gateway to a possible incarnation as an oak tree. They probably think all oak trees are identical, not a network of unique beings.”

“No.”

“I don’t think they’re even ready for a consequenceless afterlife.”

“No. They would see coming back as a bug a bad thing.”

“It’s not. It’s a pretty good life. Plenty of food, that part’s good, but predators. A bug’s life is usually pretty short.”

“They don’t see that as good thing, either.”

“There’s no ‘good’ Dude. No ‘bad’. It’s just what it is.”

“I know that. It’s difficult to… I try to live in the moment. That doesn’t come back as an oak tree, velociraptor, anything.”

“You got me there, Dude. So no on the TV show?”

“I told you, Lamont. I’m not doing it.”

“I guess you’re right. I thought it might be fun, but if we can’t even name it…”

“Naw, Lamont. You can do it. It’s not my thing, you know, television. Talking to a television audience, none of that. Naw. I don’t want to. I’m not like you. I don’t have your sardonic outlook and your pithy turn of phrase.”

“They want you to appear as a smilodon.”

“I’m not a smilodon any more, well, except on weekends.”

“What if I tell you it’s a kid’s talk show with a decided political bias to which you subscribe?”

“Huh?”

“The idea is that we subtly make the point…”

“You’ve never made a subtle point in your lives, Lamont.”

“OK, but the idea is that we gently assert…”

“You’ve never asserted gently, Lamont. It’s not you.”

“We are going to help kids understand how important it is to take care of the planet because maybe they were once dandelions, ladybugs and velociraptors.”

“I think kids would like to be velociraptors. The ones I see up there in LA on weekends, anyway. They definitely like pretending to be smilodons. It’s not far psychologically from smilodon to velociraptor.”

“There you go. Now will you do it? It was your smilodon performance that made the network interested.”

“ME?”

“Are you blushing?”

“Shut up.”

***

Lamont and Dude are characters I came up with a few years ago. They have the uncanny ability to remember many of their previous incarnations which gives them a unique perspective on life, the universe and everything.

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“Uh, like, what? I think it was might. Being a giant lizard is definitely a mighty thing. The ground shook when we walked across it. It was great for the short time I was a Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

“You were a Tyrannosaurus Rex?”

“Not long.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, stuff. You know, things. I got sick and died.”

“I’m sorry, Lamont. That’s sad.”

“That’s how it goes. One day you’re a giant thunder lizard scaring the shit out of everything and the next you’re a pile of flesh being torn apart by scavengers.”

“Listen, Lamont, back when we were dinosaurs, we were also skillful. Not just mighty. We were skillful. And fast.”

“Fast, but skill? We just saw what we wanted to eat and ate it. That’s not skill. We didn’t need skill. Food was smaller. We killed it — or not — and ate it. Humans need skill. Velociraptors, no.”

“You mean all we did was see food and eat?”

“Yeah.”

“No skills? No development of a philosophical center?”

“No. None. Why? We didn’t need any. It’s not like now. Humans are just as aggressive as velociraptors, but not as mighty. Skills and philosophies are cheap compensation for pure, dumbass might.”

“Wow, Lamont. I never thought of it that way.”

“Look at history, Dude. Over the centuries humans have tried over and over to regain the clarity of an existence based on pure might, but they’re always dragged down by their paltry size and the human tendency to ask existential and ethical questions. As velociraptors, none of that applied to us. It was a simpler time and not all that unkind, not that kindness was an issue, but we only ate when we were hungry and there was food. We didn’t fight for fun.”

“Oh god no, absolutely not. You could always end up a giant mound of flesh for no reason.”

“And we had no real enemies.”

“Hmm. I’m beginning to see what you mean.”

“Sure we had a teeny tiny brain, but that might have worked to our advantage. Hard to say.”

“It seems to me, Lamont, if humans had the might of velociraptors and the consciousness of evil and all that stuff we’re stuck with, that would be a huge burden.”

“Why didn’t you say so? The book says the participant must be willing.”

“I’m not really willing, Dude. Sorry.”

“I thought we could remember MORE of our past lives if we could hypnotize each other.”

“MORE? But would remember what we remembered during the hypnotic trance?”

“I set up this recording system here so it wouldn’t matter if we remembered it or not.”

“Huh. That’s an interesting idea. How many lives do you remember, Dude?”

“I haven’t counted. Mostly I remember the lives we’ve shared because, I think, we’ve reinforced the memories by talking about them. That’s why I thought this would be cool.”

“I could try to hypnotize you. I think you’re more, uh, suggestible than I am anyway.”

“Is that good?”

“For this, yeah.”

“OK.”

“Are you comfortable?”

“Yeah.”

“Is this thing turned on?”

“Just press the red button when you’re ready.”

“You are falling into a trance.”

“I think it’s a hole.”

***

Lamont and Dude are characters I came up with a few years ago. They have the uncanny ability to remember many of their past lives which gives them a unique perspective on life, the universe and everything.

“No. Not judging by my lives so far. I can’t see how that would ever happen as nothing is lost in the universe but exists continually as matter or energy. As we are matter AND energy, I think our recurrence is pretty secure. We’ll be back. It’ll always be ‘Hasta la vista, baby’ and never ‘Adios’.”

“Wow. Well, I wonder what we’ll be next time?”

“Who knows? I have thought about whether there’s any pattern.”

“There’s the theory that every time we do well in a lifetime, we move up a notch to a higher form of being next time.”

“That’s always bothered me, too. Who’s to say what is a ‘higher form of being’? Humans came up with that stuff so naturally they have home team loyalty. Personally, I think being an oak tree is as good as it gets. So, if that theory is true, what did I do wrong to have been so ingloriously demoted?”

“You’re saying if a dog wrote the Bhagavad Gita, dogs would be the highest form of life?”

“Yeah, but dogs would never write that.”

“I wonder what they WOULD write if they COULD write?”

“Do you remember ever having been a dog?”

“No, not really. Dire wolf?”

“Close enough. What did you think back then?”

“Hmmmm… CHASE THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH INTO THE POND NOW!!!“

“Ah…”

***

Lamont and Dude are characters I came up with a couple of years ago. They have the uncanny ability to remember many of their previous incarnations which gives them a unique perspective on life, the universe and everything.